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Higher Ground
A searing novel about slavery and its legacy that tells multiple stories, set generations and continents apart but unified by their ambitious exploration of themes of race, power, captivity, and abuse—from “a master ventriloquist [who] giv[es] immediacy and voice to an impressive range of vivid characters about whom the reader cares deeply" ( San Francisco Chronicle ).
In a slave garrison in Africa, a native collaborator betrays his people and humiliates himself in order to win the favor of white men. From an American prison cell in the 1960s, a black convict tries to impart his vision of race and justice to his indifferent family. And in a dreary city in postwar England, a displaced Jewish refugee watches her youth and sanity slip down the drain of history.
Combined and in the skilled hands of Phillips, these narratives take on a devastating power.
In a slave garrison in Africa, a native collaborator betrays his people and humiliates himself in order to win the favor of white men. From an American prison cell in the 1960s, a black convict tries to impart his vision of race and justice to his indifferent family. And in a dreary city in postwar England, a displaced Jewish refugee watches her youth and sanity slip down the drain of history.
Combined and in the skilled hands of Phillips, these narratives take on a devastating power.
224 pages, Paperback
First published September 12, 1989
4 people are currently reading
178 people want to read
About the author
Caryl Phillips
51 books215 followers Caryl Phillips was born in St.Kitts and came to Britain at the age of four months. He grew up in Leeds, and studied English Literature at Oxford University.
He began writing for the theatre and his plays include Strange Fruit (1980), Where There is Darkness (1982) and The Shelter (1983). He won the BBC Giles Cooper Award for Best Radio Play of the year with The Wasted Years (1984). He has written many dramas and documentaries for radio and television, including, in 1996, the three-hour film of his own novel The Final Passage. He wrote the screenplay for the film Playing Away (1986) and his screenplay for the Merchant Ivory adaptation of V.S.Naipaul's The Mystic Masseur (2001) won the Silver Ombu for best screenplay at the Mar Del Plata film festival in Argentina.
His novels are: The Final Passage (1985), A State of Independence (1986), Higher Ground (1989), Cambridge (1991), Crossing the River (1993), The Nature of Blood (1997), A Distant Shore (2003), Dancing in the Dark (2005), In the Falling Snow (2009), The Lost Child (2015), A View of the Empire at Sunset (2018) and Another Man in the Street (2025). His non-fiction: The European Tribe (1987), The Atlantic Sound (2000), A New World Order (2001), Foreigners (2007), and Colour Me English (2011). He is the editor of two anthologies: Extravagant Strangers: A Literature of Belonging (1997) and The Right Set: An Anthology of Writing on Tennis (1999). His work has been translated into over a dozen languages.
He was named Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year in 1992 and was on the 1993 Granta list of Best of Young British Writers. His literary awards include the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a British Council Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Fellowship, and Britain's oldest literary award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, for Crossing the River which was also shortlisted for the 1993 Booker Prize. A Distant Shore was longlisted for the 2003 Booker Prize, and won the 2004 Commonwealth Writers Prize; Dancing in the Dark won the 2006 PEN/Beyond the Margins Award. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of the Arts, and recipient of the 2013 Anthony N. Sabga Caribbean Award for Excellence.
He has taught at universities in Ghana, Sweden, Singapore, Barbados, India, and the United States, and in 1999 was the University of the West Indies Humanities Scholar of the Year. In 2002-3 he was a Fellow at the Centre for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. Formerly Henry R. Luce Professor of Migration and Social Order at Columbia University, he is presently Professor of English at Yale University. He is an Honorary Fellow of The Queen's College, Oxford University.
A regular contributor to The Guardian and The New Republic, his most recent book is, Another Man in the Street.
(taken from carylphillips.com official web site)
He began writing for the theatre and his plays include Strange Fruit (1980), Where There is Darkness (1982) and The Shelter (1983). He won the BBC Giles Cooper Award for Best Radio Play of the year with The Wasted Years (1984). He has written many dramas and documentaries for radio and television, including, in 1996, the three-hour film of his own novel The Final Passage. He wrote the screenplay for the film Playing Away (1986) and his screenplay for the Merchant Ivory adaptation of V.S.Naipaul's The Mystic Masseur (2001) won the Silver Ombu for best screenplay at the Mar Del Plata film festival in Argentina.
His novels are: The Final Passage (1985), A State of Independence (1986), Higher Ground (1989), Cambridge (1991), Crossing the River (1993), The Nature of Blood (1997), A Distant Shore (2003), Dancing in the Dark (2005), In the Falling Snow (2009), The Lost Child (2015), A View of the Empire at Sunset (2018) and Another Man in the Street (2025). His non-fiction: The European Tribe (1987), The Atlantic Sound (2000), A New World Order (2001), Foreigners (2007), and Colour Me English (2011). He is the editor of two anthologies: Extravagant Strangers: A Literature of Belonging (1997) and The Right Set: An Anthology of Writing on Tennis (1999). His work has been translated into over a dozen languages.
He was named Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year in 1992 and was on the 1993 Granta list of Best of Young British Writers. His literary awards include the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a British Council Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Fellowship, and Britain's oldest literary award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, for Crossing the River which was also shortlisted for the 1993 Booker Prize. A Distant Shore was longlisted for the 2003 Booker Prize, and won the 2004 Commonwealth Writers Prize; Dancing in the Dark won the 2006 PEN/Beyond the Margins Award. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of the Arts, and recipient of the 2013 Anthony N. Sabga Caribbean Award for Excellence.
He has taught at universities in Ghana, Sweden, Singapore, Barbados, India, and the United States, and in 1999 was the University of the West Indies Humanities Scholar of the Year. In 2002-3 he was a Fellow at the Centre for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. Formerly Henry R. Luce Professor of Migration and Social Order at Columbia University, he is presently Professor of English at Yale University. He is an Honorary Fellow of The Queen's College, Oxford University.
A regular contributor to The Guardian and The New Republic, his most recent book is, Another Man in the Street.
(taken from carylphillips.com official web site)
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
August 7, 2018
This is a powerful and heart-rending book about racism and being an outsider. I'm baffled that it appears to be so little known because it is a truly great book.
There are three parts. The first takes place at the height of the slave trade and is set in a fort in Africa. A black man (unnamed throughout) is providing involuntary assistance to the soldiers at the fort. He translates, provides information and generally does as ordered. The story outlines his relationship with the authority figures at the fort, the reluctant white soldiery who are homesick and the local village who regard him as a traitor. Various events relating to day to day life and an incident with a young girl serve to iilustrate the psyche of those involved and how they feel about each other.
The second story is set in 1967/1968 at the time of Vietnam, civil rights and black power. The protagonist, Rudi, a follower of Malcolm X is in jail and is writing to various members of his family. This is about idealism, the desire for an African homeland and a gradual grinding down of hope; the onset of despair. The letters, all one way are alternately comic, poignant and challenging.
The third story is set in Britain in the 40s and 50s and concerns a polish refugee who ends up alone in Britain after the war. She encounters ignorance and some unfriendliness and feels very alone and alien. Shafts of light are received from some people, but these are brief.
Higher Ground is beautifully written, a powerful indictment of racism and oppression.The mind numbing effects of oppression and the theme of "the murder of memory"; forgetting, which makes survival possible. There is a sense of isolation about all the protagonists; it is bleak because Phillips is illustrating how racism and oppression does destroy many people. There is no redemptive theme here because many such victims are not redeemed. A must read.
There are three parts. The first takes place at the height of the slave trade and is set in a fort in Africa. A black man (unnamed throughout) is providing involuntary assistance to the soldiers at the fort. He translates, provides information and generally does as ordered. The story outlines his relationship with the authority figures at the fort, the reluctant white soldiery who are homesick and the local village who regard him as a traitor. Various events relating to day to day life and an incident with a young girl serve to iilustrate the psyche of those involved and how they feel about each other.
The second story is set in 1967/1968 at the time of Vietnam, civil rights and black power. The protagonist, Rudi, a follower of Malcolm X is in jail and is writing to various members of his family. This is about idealism, the desire for an African homeland and a gradual grinding down of hope; the onset of despair. The letters, all one way are alternately comic, poignant and challenging.
The third story is set in Britain in the 40s and 50s and concerns a polish refugee who ends up alone in Britain after the war. She encounters ignorance and some unfriendliness and feels very alone and alien. Shafts of light are received from some people, but these are brief.
Higher Ground is beautifully written, a powerful indictment of racism and oppression.The mind numbing effects of oppression and the theme of "the murder of memory"; forgetting, which makes survival possible. There is a sense of isolation about all the protagonists; it is bleak because Phillips is illustrating how racism and oppression does destroy many people. There is no redemptive theme here because many such victims are not redeemed. A must read.
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June 13, 2017In a brief BBC interview*, Caryl Phillips, who was born in the Eastern Caribbean and grew up in Leeds, says that as a student in Oxford, he read his way through the canon of English literature and then he thought, ‘None of these books are actually about me.’ And so he realised that the book he wanted to read didn’t exist and that he would have to write it himself. He, and a handful of other writers have since gone on to write with new creativity and insight about exile, displacement and being alien, about the search for roots, for the sense of belonging and the need to find a place in the world.
The difference between Phillips’ writing and the classic canon is that he has a unique ability to give a voice to people who have never had a voice, whose stories had only ever been told by others, never by themselves. Conrad took us into the heart of darkness but preferred, in the end to leave it a mystery. Phillips, in the first section of this novel, takes the heart out of the darkness and examines it in the harsh light of day. This section, called Heartland, is set in the eighteenth century along the west coast of Africa. The subject of Heartland is the slave trade and Phillips, without any sensationalism or dramatic effects, and relying simply on his own perfect prose, allows us a documentary style view of the realities of the harvesting in humans which was carried out by the slave traders. Being a descendant of slaves himself, we have faith in his version.
The other two sections of Higher Ground are very different to the first one, and to each other, but they all have this in common: the protagonist is out of step with his time and his place. They are all lost souls who are trapped between worlds and between the layers of Time.
* http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainme...
The difference between Phillips’ writing and the classic canon is that he has a unique ability to give a voice to people who have never had a voice, whose stories had only ever been told by others, never by themselves. Conrad took us into the heart of darkness but preferred, in the end to leave it a mystery. Phillips, in the first section of this novel, takes the heart out of the darkness and examines it in the harsh light of day. This section, called Heartland, is set in the eighteenth century along the west coast of Africa. The subject of Heartland is the slave trade and Phillips, without any sensationalism or dramatic effects, and relying simply on his own perfect prose, allows us a documentary style view of the realities of the harvesting in humans which was carried out by the slave traders. Being a descendant of slaves himself, we have faith in his version.
The other two sections of Higher Ground are very different to the first one, and to each other, but they all have this in common: the protagonist is out of step with his time and his place. They are all lost souls who are trapped between worlds and between the layers of Time.
* http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainme...
September 20, 2022
A trio of related stories on themes of racism and dispossession. An African factor at a slave trading fort struggles to maintain his precarious position - an incarcerated young man in the 1960s writes letters sharing with his family his Black nationalist views and his struggle to maintain his identity and optimism (and his homophobia and misogyny...), a Polish refugee in the UK grapples with mental health issues and loss, and forms a brief connection with a young black man.
Very well-written and thought-provoking, though I had some challenges feeling drawn in as I was reading.
Very well-written and thought-provoking, though I had some challenges feeling drawn in as I was reading.
October 27, 2017
In HIGHER GROUND, Caryl Phillips, born in the West Indies and raised and educated in Britain, links together the evil of white slave traders, Southern US racism and the perpetrators of the Holocaust in a harrowing triptych about oppression.
The focus is on the internal impact of oppression and it's numbing effect on the individual spirit. So we have three novellas set on three different continents spanning 200 years.
The African unnamed narrator of the first novella has been taught English in order to assist slave traders. His emotional and physical survival depends on his capacity to forget his former life and freedom. He is grateful because he has mastered the art of "murdering the memory".
The murder of memory is one of the most important themes in the novel. It reappears in the next novella which uses the epistolary form. The letter writer this time is a black man in a US Southern prison because he stole 40 dollars. In spite of his suffering, he tries to keep the dream of African return alive.
The third story is about a survivor of the Nazi Holocaust, a Polish girl who managed to survive because her father was able to send her from Poland to England on a children's transport. He did save her physical life, however the loss of her family destroyed her sanity.
Phillips is a very talented writer who is able to give a voice to very different characters. He conveys a sad and unsettling pessimism about the possibility of real freedom for the dispossessed. This book is not a cozy nor a fun read. But it is a thoughtful and necessary book.
The focus is on the internal impact of oppression and it's numbing effect on the individual spirit. So we have three novellas set on three different continents spanning 200 years.
The African unnamed narrator of the first novella has been taught English in order to assist slave traders. His emotional and physical survival depends on his capacity to forget his former life and freedom. He is grateful because he has mastered the art of "murdering the memory".
The murder of memory is one of the most important themes in the novel. It reappears in the next novella which uses the epistolary form. The letter writer this time is a black man in a US Southern prison because he stole 40 dollars. In spite of his suffering, he tries to keep the dream of African return alive.
The third story is about a survivor of the Nazi Holocaust, a Polish girl who managed to survive because her father was able to send her from Poland to England on a children's transport. He did save her physical life, however the loss of her family destroyed her sanity.
Phillips is a very talented writer who is able to give a voice to very different characters. He conveys a sad and unsettling pessimism about the possibility of real freedom for the dispossessed. This book is not a cozy nor a fun read. But it is a thoughtful and necessary book.
July 23, 2018
I recently heard about this Caribbean born writer who writes well. Higher ground is more like three loosely themed stories on isolation and loneliness. It is quite a bleak tale. I enjoyed the first story the most. This deals with an unnamed narrator who is involved in slave trade and hated by both sides. He finds an opportunity to care again and live but ......
The second tale involves Rudolph who is in maximum security. He pens letters to his family. Through these letters you see the toil prison takes on this lost young man.
And the final tale is of a Polish woman living in England in the time of world war 2 and the strain on her life. She is Jewish and had to flee Poland without her family. In the first tale there is a hope of living again but......
Whilst these tales are poignant, the writing is sparse yet captures the emotion well. There was also a vivid look at mental health here, though more as a documentary format. But I’m going to need a light read as these narratives were quite intense and real.
The second tale involves Rudolph who is in maximum security. He pens letters to his family. Through these letters you see the toil prison takes on this lost young man.
And the final tale is of a Polish woman living in England in the time of world war 2 and the strain on her life. She is Jewish and had to flee Poland without her family. In the first tale there is a hope of living again but......
Whilst these tales are poignant, the writing is sparse yet captures the emotion well. There was also a vivid look at mental health here, though more as a documentary format. But I’m going to need a light read as these narratives were quite intense and real.
December 3, 2020
How do we (I) know so little about Caryl Phillips and his writing? This book is powerfully written. The emotions linger long after the words; anger, confusion, righteousness, sadness. The three main character in each part of the book feel as real as you or I.
And, although having been written and first published in 1989, it is incredibly topical and the language of the Black Lives Movement echoes his on racism and the treatment of black men showing how far we still have to come. I strongly recommend this book.
And, although having been written and first published in 1989, it is incredibly topical and the language of the Black Lives Movement echoes his on racism and the treatment of black men showing how far we still have to come. I strongly recommend this book.
December 7, 2019
Brace for Sophie's Choice-level ugly-crying.
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September 3, 2012I decided Caryl Phillips was a writer I wanted to read when I saw him interviewed on a BBC book programme—he seemed to have an intelligent and refreshing take on race and identity—and I was not disappointed by Higher Ground. The three stories in here are portraits of people whose lives wouldn't perhaps figure in any history of slave-trading in West Africa, or the black power movement in sixties America, or a Polish exile in post-WWII London, but put together they are a powerful depiction of the historical collateral damage: the generational trickle-down effect of suffering. It's very powerful and evocative writing; you can really imagine what it's like to live inside a slave traders fortress on the African coast, or an excrement-smeared solitary confinement cell in prison, or a bare room in London. His writing makes you feel that the echoes of history are in us all.
I had the fortune to hear Caryl Phillips speak under the gum trees at the Adelaide Writers Festival in March 2012. Afterwards I lined up to get this book signed, and was most impressed by the way he had obviously personal conversations with everyone. He told me an amusing anecdote about Angela Carter speaking Japanese, and also said he's a great fan of Shusaku Endo. Apparently there's an essay about Japan in his latest book, which I will definitely be buying.
I had the fortune to hear Caryl Phillips speak under the gum trees at the Adelaide Writers Festival in March 2012. Afterwards I lined up to get this book signed, and was most impressed by the way he had obviously personal conversations with everyone. He told me an amusing anecdote about Angela Carter speaking Japanese, and also said he's a great fan of Shusaku Endo. Apparently there's an essay about Japan in his latest book, which I will definitely be buying.
October 17, 2007
love caryl philips!
September 13, 2011
This was to me what Huck Finn was supposed to be in high school.
August 9, 2013
A sadly familiar tale repeated three times. The pain of a subjugated identity and the damage it does resonates. Bleak stuff. B+.
February 21, 2014
Three unrelated stories all linked by the common theme of racism across different eras. I really enjoyed this book, except for Rudi in "Cargo Raps"...he was a bit too much for me.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews